- before 2009 called Semantic Media Interfaces - 

Leader of the group Interactive Information Access  (INS2): Arjen de Vries

While people have access to huge amounts of information, they typically need only a very limited subset of it to carry out their current task. In addition, with the introduction of data repositories with potentially expandable schema (for example those available in knowledge repositories on the Semantic Web), the core challenge is to find and present relevant subsets of these for a particular end user. Our goal is to support human users in obtaining the correct information, in the appropriate amount, relevant to the task at hand and presented in the appropriate way. This should minimise the cognitive overhead of the user, thus contributing to minimising the time for a user to complete her task.

Our aim is to develop methods to explore and confirm appropriate models of storage, selection, organisation and presentation of information to the user.

Our methods are based on developing solutions for linking descriptive semantics with the media assets that contain the information interpretable by the end user. Tools include Semantic Web knowledge description languages and associated tools. In parallel, empirical studies are used to understand the needs of users with their specific information needs. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations are carried out. Our current emphasis is on expert access to cultural heritage information owned by museums (MultimediaN Eculture project) and on end-user access to news content owned by news providers (NewsML work carried out in the context of K-Space).

This group is part of the cluster Information Systems (INS).